Each year during the first weekend in May, beach built island Schooners & Sloops from all over the Caribbean return to the Port of Gustavia, St. Barths to commemorate the great days of trading by sail between the islands.

The event takes place over three days and includes sailing, an Island Market, live music and much more... April 30 - May 3, 2015

Press 2012

This 4th annual event was officially dubbed “The WET indies Regatta” by some clever fellow at the prizegiving ceremony – he was right and although light & variable winds prevailed, the five attending Carriacou Sloops set out to race anyway, followed by the glorious site of not one, but TWO island schooners.

On Friday there was a welcome party onboard the Scaramouche which had sailed all the way from Union Island in the Grenadines with a cargo of goods for the island market that included Grenada chocolate and cocoa balls, Vincy Rum, Anguilla arts and crafts, spices, jellies & chutney from Grenada, honey from Bequia, regatta T shirts and much more…

Saturday saw the fleet ghosting along the coast from Gustavia all the way to shell beach! Here a raft up ensued with kids swinging off the rigging while swaying guitars serenaded the crews. After returning to the dock, a projection screen was set up and the crowd was treated to the trailer for Vanishing Sail, a film in production about the boatbuilders of the Grenadines. This was followed by the film GliGli – Carib Canoe Project made over ten years ago and still very compelling today.

Sunday saw more light air and a few skippers suggested we have a layday on the dock. Luckily good sportsmanship prevailed and so we ‘raced’ again in light air from Gustavia all the way to Colombier during a 2 hr spectacle of heavy vessel tactics and much rudder pumping… Here another picnic of wet & wild proportions took place under sullen skies and with new friends made, the last race started with most of the fleet sailing backwards!

Although most vessels retired, Summer Cloud, Ocean Nomad and Savvy battled it out for a sprint @ 1.5 knots all the way to the finish.

That evening a prizegiving ceremony was held to honour the attendees with live music supplied by the high energy “Rocking Mangoes”:
The results:
Ocean Nomad – Overall Winner
Schooner Scaramouche – Queen of the Fleet
Summer Cloud – Most Competitive Sloop
Alexander Hamilton – Fastest Schooner in Light Airs
Savvy – Sailed The Furthest To Attend (Grenada)
Tradition – Most Well Kept Vessel Of The Fleet
Genesis – For Most Kids Onboard!

On Monday Thierry at La Plage invited all the crews to lunch to enjoy some true St. Barth hospitality and after a recovery period took place, we all set out again en famille to discover more overwhelming generosity by Randy & Maya at Maya’s restaurant where Jason treated us to another rendition of his unlimited Bob Marley repertoire!